PCA Forums

I was trying to get some of the wife's older software installed on her laptop .. Dell Vostro 3550, I5, 6 MB, win7 pro 64. So it looked like I needed to install xp mode and virtual mode. Went to MS, downloaded and installed both per the instruction from the MS web site - no apparent issues.

On reboot get the message "The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." Only thing that I can do from there is reboot and get the same thing.

No image to restore to . Guess I never turned that on. It will boot in safe mode, but I couldn't find anything useful that it would do. All I could do in the user setting was change the profile picture (whoopee!). Outside chance of a virus - ms security essentials turned off, won't restart - computer has barely been used but did copy over 13 mb of files from her old computer.

Tried booting up from win7 disk - and repair - it just asked me what the problem was, etc., and didn't get anywhere.

It won't be a huge loss to reinstall windows, but got quite a few hours in already installing programs and copying files. There is a dell restore partition showing as "D:" - but figured that would have the same effect as a clean install - although that would have the drivers, etc.

any thoughts welcomed!

TIA

John

You cant boot in safe mode and create a new profile under the administrator account?

how about the MS Sweeper utility?

http://www.pcabusers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51569

If you are unable to access any administrator accounts, then you'll have to do a repair install which should keep much of what you have done intact.

Can't do anything with the admin accounts....when I tried the install repair it just gave me a limited number of actions none of which helped...will try the sweeper tonite.....I was hoping for a simple command prompt trick like
ysf*cked/C:, fixem/now

Unfortunately, the extra security offered by Windows 7 also means that it's harder to fix this particular problem. There are ways to save it, but in the end they'd be harder than a re-install IMO.

I doubt Sweeper will help. Doesn't sound like a virus.

You can perform a repair install using a Win7 installer DVD (assuming you have one): http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/34 ... stall.html

If you have to, use the factory recovery AFTER backing up her data by either using a BartPE disc or connecting the drive as a spare.

The Dell factory recovery can usually be accessed by pressing CTRL + F11 as soon as the Dell logo appears.

According to that article (one FP cited) You cannot do a repair install at boot or in Safe Mode.

Since I can't get in at boot, I guess it will be just use the dell restore function. All the files I copied are sitting on her old laptop, no point in copying what's on the new one - I'll just copy them from the old one again.

thanks all - I will try the sweeper thing on the off chance there was a virus in all that junk I copied -

Yeah, the ONLY way to do a repair install is with the DVD. You basically perform an upgrade.

Trouble is they usually don't give you the DVD anymore unless you specifically ask for it.

system restore from the recovery console? i got lucky one time and was able to manually launch the system recovery to repair a non-booting machine.

I tried with the Dell install disk - very limited choices - I do have a regular oem disk that I will try - according to the article FP cited that is the only one that works - not a dell disk, etc.

ran scanner for what the heck, it's almost finished - we'll see if it found/fixed anything - probably a corrupt file though I did do a full chkdsk

hopefully something will work...if not I'll just do a clean install.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70 ... store.html

just to clarify, i was talking about a system restore, not a system recovery via the Dell OEM tools. scroll about half way down to see how to initiate the restore from a boot menu and not from within Windows.